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But it’s not until Loudmouth shows up out of nowhere, jamming out on his accordion like it’s a cherry-red electric guitar with flames painted on it, that I finally feel confident enough to use my full voice. It’s not pretty. It’s not perfect. It sure as hell wasn’t good enough for the Franklin Springs First Baptist Church choir. But when I look Q in the eyes and tell her she’s a pathetic liar who’s gonna die alone, it sounds pretty damn good to me.
Sophie comes running up beside me and starts dancing and singing at the top of her lungs, and by the last chorus, even Wes and too-cool-for-school Lamar are singing along.
When the song is over, Tiny Tim keeps it going about two minutes too long with the world’s worst and most enthusiastic banjo solo. We all burst out laughing as he holds the instrument over his head like he just played Lollapalooza.
But the sound of gunfire shuts us up real quick.
As the blast echoes through the two-story atrium, making my heart stop and my hands reach for Wes, the body of the banjo explodes, showering Tiny in splintered wood.
Q stands up, unsteady on her feet, and replaces all of our laughter with a deep, stoned chuckle of her own. “Y’all muhfuckas a buncha … comedians, huh?” She swings a small black handgun around in her limp wrist, gesturing to all of us with the barrel. “Y’all a buncha rock stars now?”
She stumbles as she takes a few steps forward, a self-satisfied grin on her sleepy-eyed face. “Well, you know what rock stars eat?” A slow, evil laugh vibrates through her smiling lips. “They don’t eat shit.”
Her heavily lidded eyes land on Tiny, who’s holding what’s left of his decimated banjo and looking like he wants to cry. Walking over to him, she pokes his portly belly with the barrel of her gun and sneers, “So tomorrow, y’all ain’t gon’ eat shit.”
Everyone holds their breath as Q sashays toward the hallway she came from, that slow, closed-mouth chuckle punctuating the silence as she drifts away.
Taking our joy along with her.
Wes
As soon as Q walks off, I realize how badly we just fucked up.
Not only are we on that cunt’s shit list now, but we got the runaways in trouble too.
One phone call. That’s all it would take for Rain to get a bullet between the eyes on live TV, and we just made a whole lotta new enemies.
Everyone scatters back to their own corners of the mall, grumbling and giving us shitty looks, while Rain sits with her hoodie-covered hands over her mouth, staring at the dark hallway that Q just disappeared into.
“Soph! What the fuck was that? Get back in here!” a deep voice echoes from down the hallway behind us. I know without looking that it belongs to that smug little shit Carter.
“Coming!” Sophie calls out. Then, she turns to Rain with big, sad eyes. “I gotta go. Carter didn’t want me to come out here. Happy birthday though.”
“Thanks, big girl.” Rain fakes a smile and spreads her arms for a hug. “You go tell your brother he’s not the boss of you.” She sounds so different when she talks to kids. Stronger. More confident. She sounds like a mom.
But a good one, not the piece-of-shit version I was cursed with.
As soon as the girl is gone, Rain’s posture wilts like the dying daisy I tucked behind her ear.
“Q just fired a gun like, twenty feet away from her.” She shakes her head.
“She’s fine.”
“She’s gonna go hungry tomorrow. Because of me.”
“No, she’s not.” I cup Rain’s jaw and turn her miserable, beautiful face toward mine. “Everybody here has food stashed somewhere. Nobody’s gonna starve, okay?”
Rain’s eyes land on the floor. “This isn’t the end, Wes. Q is gonna do something else. She’s gonna try to get me back for this.”
“Not if you leave.”
Shit.
Rain’s chest rises and falls as her breathing speeds up, and I know I brought it up too soon.
“I …” She looks around—at the blanket, at the candles, at the guitar in my hands—and I prepare to hear another, I can’t.
But instead, Rain mumbles, “I’m not ready.”
